Idle Quotes - Page 11

• We cannot afford to be idle, and though weaker than our opponents in men and military equipments, must endeavor to harass, if we cannot destroy them.

  Robert E. Lee

  Military, War, Men

  7 Copy quote

• The much-maligned idle rich have received a bad rap: They have maintained their wealth while many There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it. Andrew Carnegie of the energetic rich, aggressive real estate operators, corporate acquirers, oil drillers, etc. have their fortunes disappear.

  Warren Buffett

  Real, Rap, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power and should not be at all your concerns.

  Epictetus

  Silly, Reflection, Achievement

  7 Copy quote

• Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.

  Will Self

  Philosophy, Writing, Creativity

  4 Copy quote

• I give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamored of danger.

  Jean Genet

  Lying, Names, Giving

  Jean Genet, Edmund White (1993). “The selected writings of Jean Genet”, Ecco Pr

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I always considered an idle Life, as a real evil, but, a life of such hurry, such constant hurry, leaves us scarcely a moment for reflection or for the discharge of any other then the most immediate and pressing concerns.

  Edward Rutledge

  Real, Reflection, Evil

  "John and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina". Book by James Haw, p. 233, 1997.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today we may face some boring task or idle conversation that feels like a complete waste of time. Perhaps next week or next year we'll understand that nothing is wasted, that in the economy of our universe even a weed is simply a flower whose use has yet to be discovered.

  Mort Crim

  Weed, Flower, Next Week

  6 Copy quote

• Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.

  Mark Twain

  Kings, Bread, Earth

  Mark Twain (1992). “Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays: 1852-1890”, Library of America

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We [The Replacements] never made any money on tour. None of us came out of the school of economics. We took it for granted that a rock and roll band gets ripped off. We've tried to shake that tree a couple of times, but what can we do? You look back, when you're sort of idle in your middle years, and think, we should have made some money.

  Paul Westerberg

  Couple, School, Thinking

  Source: pitchfork.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.

  Henry James

  Character, Reality, Color

  Henry James (1979). “What Maisie Knew: In the Cage - The Pupil”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Ocean, Often Is, Evil

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.312

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Provide yourself with such work for your hands as can be done, if possible, both during the day and at night, so that you are not a burden to anyone, and indeed can give to others, as St. Paul the Apostle advises (cf. I Thess. 2:9; Eph. 4:28). In this manner you will overcome the demon of listlessness and drive away all the desires suggested by the enemy; for the demon of listlessness takes advantage of idleness. 'Every idle man is full of desires' (Prov. 13:4 LXX).

  Evagrius Ponticus

  Christian, Night, Men

  21 Copy quote

• There was a moment when I was getting death threats and bullshit via the Internet, so I was being a little more conscious and reading local message boards before going to certain towns, just to see if people were making bullshit idle threats on the Internet.

  Jay Reatard

  Reading, People, Bullshit

  Source: music.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• EVERY intention which does not assert itself by deeds is a vain intention, and the speech which expresses it is idle speech. It is action which proves life and establishes will

  Eliphas Levi

  Doe, Deeds, Speech

  Eliphas Levi (2013). “The Ritual of Transcendental Magic”, p.16, Jazzybee Verlag

  86 Copy quote

  Show source

• For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
  God's everlasting fiery jails
  (Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
  With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
  Are senseless stories, idle tales,
  Dreams, whimseys, and no more.

  John Wilmot

  Dream, Dog, Doors

  John Wilmot, John Adlard (2002). “The Debt to Pleasure: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in the Eyes of His Contemporaries and in His Own Poetry and Prose”, p.126, Taylor & Francis

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Edwidge Danticat's prose has a Chekhovian simplicity--an ability to state the most urgent truths in a measured and patiently plain style that gathers a luminous energy as it moves inexorably forward. In this book she makes a strong case that art, for immigrants from countries where human rights and even survival are often in jeopardy, must be a vocation to witness if it is not to be an idle luxury.

  Madison Smartt Bell

  Country, Art, Strong

  4 Copy quote

• Not to be lost in idle admiration is the only sure means of making and preserving happiness.

  Horace

  Mean, Admiration, Lost

  8 Copy quote

• Today, I am an inquisitor. I shall not sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

  Barbara Jordan

  Democracy, Today, Constitution

  Barbara Jordan, Shelby Hearon (1979). “Barbara Jordan, a self-portrait”, Doubleday Books

  126 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Love, Busy, Indolence

  8 Copy quote

• The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Latin, Book, School

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.82, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  People, Curiosity, Importance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.159, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens i' th' shell.

  William Shakespeare

  Eggs, Shells, Eating

  William Shakespeare (2015). “Troilus and Cressida: Third Series, Revised Edition”, p.170, Bloomsbury Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• O, my lord, You said that idle weeds are fast in growth: The prince my brother hath outgrown me far.

  William Shakespeare

  Weed, Brother, Growth

  William Shakespeare (2013). “Histories of Shakespeare in Plain and Simple English (a Modern Translation and the Original Version)”, p.447, BookCaps Study Guides

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit - how it grows! what a luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment, how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves with their beguiling fantasies - oh, yes, and how soon and how easily our dream-life and our material life become so intermingled and so fused together that we can't quite tell which is which, anymore.

  Mark Twain

  Dream, Luxury, Soul

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.3191, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.

  Plato

  Drones, Bees, Idleness

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

  32 Copy quote

  Show source